The 15 colleges where business majors get the best return on their investment

Graduates at commencement at the University of California at Berkeley on May 16. REUTERS/Noah Berger The investments of time and money put into a obtaining a college education are huge.

But the monetary investment is becoming increasingly significant as college tuition continues to rise nationwide.

With that rise in tuition has come a steady increase in student-loan debt. Today the average college graduate faces a deficit of about $30,000, and total student debt throughout the country is well over $1 trillion.

Katie Bardaro, the lead economist at PayScale, the creator of the world's largest compensation database, said in a press release that the country was "reaching crisis levels in terms of student-loan debt."

"This situation has broad economic implications for students facing underemployment and possibly delaying life decisions like marriage, home buying, and starting a family," Bardaro added. "These major milestones help drive the economy, and a weakened economy affects everybody, not just new college grads."

In an effort to inform students about each colleges' potential return on investment, PayScale released a report in March on the best colleges for your money. Included in the report is a list of the leading colleges from a general standpoint, along with separate lists focused on individual majors, career paths, locations, and other categories.

Here are the top 15 colleges for business majors:

PayScaleThe University of California at Berkeley appears twice on the list, holding the top two spots, because of its differing in-state and out-of-state costs. The University of Pennsylvania, Babson College, and Santa Clara University round out the top five.

If you factor in financial aid, the top five changes. The University of Pennsylvania jumps ahead of Berkeley (out-of-state) in the No. 2 spot, and Cornell University moves to fifth from seventh.

All data used to produce PayScale's Return on Investment (ROI) Package were collected from employees who successfully completed PayScale's employee survey. To calculate ROI, Payscale looked at the investment in each college, which includes the cost of attending, as calculated by the cost for a graduate in 2014, on and off campus — and then looked at the return for each college, which is the expected future income stream. (Click here to read more about the methodology.)